


Inhuman

by GalahadWilder



Category: Superman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Also she swears a bunch, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Identity Reveal, Lois Breaks Things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2019-10-19 11:31:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17600519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalahadWilder/pseuds/GalahadWilder
Summary: Kent’s been nervous lately, and Lois thinks he’s about to propose.She’s close, but only kind of.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unpretty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unpretty/gifts).



“I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling Chinese,” Lois said as she shucked her coat onto the floor. “Long day. I’m not exactly feeling cooking, you know?”

Clark sighed playfully as he bent down to pick her coat off the floor, opened the closet and hung it carefully inside. “Heaven forbid Lois Lane _cooks_.” He glanced at his cookbook collection, the one she knew he’d already memorized but he liked to look over anyway. “Homemade’s healthier. I’m sure there’s a General Tso’s recipe in there somewhere I can make.”

”Just so long as it’s not tofu,” Lois said as she kicked her pumps off in the general direction of the shoe rack that Clark had insisted on getting her after one too many times of finding her investigatin’ boots muddying up her carpet. “You may be vegetarian but the rest of us still require protein like normal people.” She’d long stopped asking how someone who never ate meat had grown so huge—just another one of those mysteries life threw at her that would never get answered, like why every Gothamite she’d ever met was completely hatstand, or how Bibbo had managed to beat Superman at arm wrestling, since neither one of them was interested in sharing the details.

”You don’t have any chicken,” Clark said without even looking, “and the pork’s gone bad.” She still wasn’t sure how he was able to do that—just another Kent eccentricity. Maybe it was a farmer thing.

”Takeout it is,” Lois said, flopping onto the couch and pulling up Seamless on her phone. “Ooh, Indian. They usually have great tofu stuff too.”

”Sure,” Clark said. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen Brian anyway.”

Lois rolled her eyes. “You’ve lived in this city for four years and I swear you’re on a first-name basis with half the delivery guys in the Metro area,” she said, selecting some tandoori chicken for herself and then scrolling through the tofu dishes for her boyfriend. “I don’t even know his _last_ name, much less his first.”

“Their last name’s not even hard,” Clark grumbled as he collected his girlfriend’s discarded shoes and moved them to the rack. “Half the Sikh population in the US is called Singh.”

The corner of Lois’s mouth perked upwards. “Really? Huh.”

”Well, not exactly half, but it is disproportionately large,” Clark said. He ambled over to the couch and stood in front of her, but did not sit down. Instead, he seemed nervous—or more nervous than usual, anyway.

“Clark, if you’re trying to propose, just say so,” Lois said with a grin, not even looking up from her phone.

”That’s... um, not exactly,” he said, his eyes wandering toward the ground. “Wouldn’t be fair to you if you didn’t know.”

That stopped her. This was new—not their usual banter, his usual Kent oafishness or awkwardness or shyness. Not exactly? Didn’t know? He wanted to tell her something, something important; he honestly thought he’d been keeping a secret from her, unlikely as that possibility actually was. ”Didn’t know what?” She raised an eyebrow as she stood, hoping to put him more at ease and knowing it wouldn’t work: you could never really put Kent fully at ease. “What, are you going to tell me you’re Gangbuster?” she said, smoothing his collar. “Because Delgado isn’t THAT good at hiding his secret identity.”

Clark coughed a single laugh. “Actually _was_ Gangbuster for a bit,” he murmured.

Lois crossed her arms. “Real funny, Kent.”

He looked up, met her eyes, then rubbed his face with one palm, his fingers going under his glasses and covering his eyes. “Heck,” he sighed, in that clean-cut innocent way he always did when he was failing to properly swear. Then he pulled his glasses away from his face, looking down into the lenses.

Then, somehow, six-foot-one Clark Kent _unfolded_. His gut vanished into his chest as his back lengthened—no, straightened—and suddenly he was standing an impossible half-foot taller, forcing awareness into her brain of just how much he towered over her, Fat shrank as muscles bulged, straining against his shirt, and Lois felt terror rise in her in a way it hadn’t even when Brainiac had swung a laser saw at her windpipe—this must’ve been how people like Lucy felt, some calmer part of her brain realized, when confronted with Bizarro or Ignition or even Strange Visitor. She could feel the rising menace in the thing that had been pretending to be her quiet and unassuming Clark, the power radiating off the creature in waves, and her courage failed her for the first time since the shuttle, the last time she’d felt so utterly helpless—deep in her bones, she knew beyond doubt that she was about to become a casualty of natural selection. She took a step back, unbreathing, the back of her mind desperately casting about for a weapon, any weapon, something to get at least one shot in before the monster obliterated her. She always knew she was going to go down fighting.

Then the fat rolls—or rather, she realized, the continually flexed muscles—melted off his face as his skin darkened from pale chalk to a golden tan, and she realized she recognized that face.

”Hi,” Superman said, in a voice a full octave lower than Clark’s, yet still somehow full of the same anxiety and trepidation. Which was unnerving. Superman _never_ sounded like that—he was always sure, always certain, even if he was on the brink of death. This was Superman, wearing Clark’s clothing; Superman’s voice with Clark’s inflections. Every part of this was just... downright bizarre.

Lois’s fingers wrapped around the lamp next to her, and she swung before she even realized what was happening. The alien didn’t even flinch as the brass buckled against his cheek, the lamp deforming on his invulnerable flesh. Lois dropped the lamp as if it were burning her, scrambled backward, snatched a chair and smashed it uselessly against his unmoving chest, where it exploded into splinters. Splinters that vanished in a blur of arms, and then Superman was standing in the exact same place, holding a garbage bag she could only assume was full of chair.

He had moved at what was likely nearly the speed of sound. He could have snapped her neck without her even knowing it had happened. And instead he used his phenomenal, godlike powers to clean up the trash while it was in midair.

It was such a Kent thing that she began to laugh. Collapsed onto the couch. Here she was, standing in the same room as an alien god, and he was holding a trash bag as if he weren’t sure how it got there.

Superman’s face was impassive. “I scared you,” he said, apology in his voice. It wasn’t a question.

”Oh, god,” Lois whispered through panicked giggles. “I... I can’t... you...”

“Superman” collapsed into himself, and suddenly there was Clark again, massive yet unassuming. But now she could see the strain, the way his muscles fit wrong, the effort he put into making himself smaller, unnoticed.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”

”Fuck you,” Lois whispered.

”Do you... do you need me to...?”

”Get the fuck out of my apartment.”

She blinked, and he was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

“I can’t get ahold of Clark,” Lois said as soon as Jimmy opened his apartment door.

Jimmy smirked. “Hello to you too, Lois,” he said. “How was your day? Oh, it was great, thanks Jimmy, how was yours?”

Lois groaned. “Less than great, actually,” she said. “Sorry. How are you?”

”Not bad,” he said. “Kyle’s over.” He glanced toward the bedroom, waggled his eyebrow. “Kind of... busy?”

”Wait, _the_ Kyle?” Lois said. “Shit, Jim, well done.” She put up her hands. “One question and I’ll let you get back to your...” She tilted her head. “Boyfriend?”

”Not _yet_ ,” Jimmy said with a sheepish grin. “What do you need?”

”Does Clark have a particular place he goes when he’s feeling sad or hurt?”

Jimmy raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you live with him?”

Lois sighed, looked to the ground. “We had a fight,” she said. “And... I don’t know him as well as I thought I did.”

Jimmy blinked. “Wait, he—” He cut himself off, glanced back at his bedroom door, then leaned in. “He told you?” he whispered. “You know, about...?” He trailed off, then tapped his watch.

Lois’s eyes got cold. _Real_ cold. “How long have you known?”

Jimmy scratched the back of his neck, looking anywhere but her face. “Um... remember back when he and I were roomies... and we both got laryngitis at the same time?” He nodded. “Omega Beams came right through the ceiling while we were playing Street Fighter. I thought he was dead for three days before I caught him coming back in through the window.”

Lois smiled. “Your old apartment was on the fifth floor.”

”Yeah.” Jimmy shook his head. “He didn’t even bother to hide it after that point, I had to take an extra day off just to deal with the fact that I was roommates with an alien.” He reached out toward her shoulder, then thought better of it. “I’m... glad he finally got the guts to tell you, though,” he said. “He’s been telling me he was gonna do it for like eight months now.”

Lois stared at him for a moment, before clutching her stomach and laughing so hard he could hear the breath go out of her body.

”Lois?” he said. “You okay?”

”Sorry,” she rasped, wiping tears from her eyes. “It’s just... so Kent, isn’t it?” She straightened, gripping the back of Jimmy’s couch. “He can fistfight an alien warlord, but he never did know how to talk to women.”

Jimmy grinned. “Knew how to talk to you, though,” he said.

Lois nodded. “Guess he did,” she said. “Any idea how I can get in touch with him?”

”Hmm.” Jimmy scratched his chin. “Well, he’ll be at his parents’ place in Smallville by now...” He held up his wrist. “Wanna borrow the watch?”

* * *

It was incredible, Clark thought as he chopped carrots for the salad, how she was able to leave him undone so easily.

Many believed (erroneously) that he was the most powerful being on the planet, though he knew that he wasn’t even that for the Justice League—that might go to J’onn. Or Patrick. Still, he could face down bullets without a scratch, survive a tank round to the face, and yet... his greatest weakness was a fiery reporter who was too busy writing to learn how to spell. Two sentences and she’d broken him utterly.

”You just need to give her time, Clark,” his mother said, opening the oven to stick a fork into the meatloaf. “She’ll get over it.”

”Lord knows we did,” his father added, stirring the potatoes.

”You had twenty-five years,” Clark grumbled. “And you knew what I was from the start.”

"What about Bruce?" his mother replied. "He seemed to get used to you real quick."

"Bruce has about thirty different ways to kill me," Clark said. "I'm pretty sure he was only okay with me because..."

A screaming whine reached his ear, and he trailed off.

His dad looked up. "You hear something?"

Clark nodded. "Yeah," he said, and then his outer clothes were folded neatly on the couch and Clark Kent was replaced with Superman. "I need to go," he said, vanishing in a blast of wind.

"So," Jonathan said, holding up the potato spoon to inspect the consistency. "Lois used the watch?"

"No bet," Marth replied with a smile.

* * *

Superman crossed seven states in ten seconds. He took a further three to encircle the city and triangulate the signal watch. Now, fifteen seconds after leaving his house, he was floating near the top of the Daily Planet building, looking not at his best friend Jimmy Olsen... but at Lois.

She smiled, shyly. "Hey, Smallville."

His heart flopped in his chest at the sound of her voice.

 


End file.
